Chapter 2: The Lie And The Lifeline

Chapter 9: Immortality and a Doomed Boy

Arthur’s grotesque and shocking presentation with Shinji’s severed head had undeniably sent profound shockwaves through the student body and the teaching staff. It had also, in its own horrific way, achieved one of his desperate objectives: Yūka Somezaki was broken, her necromantic Talent voluntarily renounced, and thus, she was no longer an immediate, practicing threat that Nana Hiiragi might feel compelled to eliminate. However, Arthur knew this act of desperate intervention wouldn’t stop Nana for long. She was a force of nature, a meticulously programmed killer, and she would simply recalibrate and move on to other names on her unseen list.

And so she did. Perhaps driven by a need to understand or neutralize one of the most overtly powerful Talents on the island, or maybe even by a flicker of genuine curiosity that occasionally surfaced beneath her assassin’s programming, Nana Hiiragi found herself accepting an unexpected invitation. Kyouya Onodera, the aloof, white-haired boy who had bluntly declared his immortality upon arrival, had invited her to his small, somewhat dilapidated house on the outskirts of the main school grounds. It was an unusual gesture from the solitary Kyouya, and Nana, ever watchful for an opportunity to assess a potential threat or gather intelligence, had agreed.

Arthur only learned of this visit later, through the island’s surprisingly efficient student rumour mill – whispers of Nana being seen heading towards Kyouya’s secluded cottage – and by his own grim piecing together of the explosive events that followed.

During Nana’s visit to Kyouya’s surprisingly cluttered and book-filled house, as she’d excused herself to use his small, old-fashioned bathroom, she was reportedly struck by an almost overwhelming olfactory assault – the cloying, combined scent of various strong, masculine toiletries: harsh antiseptic soaps, pine-scented shampoos, a bracingly powerful aftershave, all mingling in the small, poorly ventilated space. When she casually commented on the rather potent aroma, remarking that he must have a fondness for particularly fragrant products, Kyouya had merely looked blank, a slight frown of confusion on his face. He claimed, with apparent sincerity, that he didn’t smell anything particularly strong or out of the ordinary.

It was then, Arthur deduced, that Nana, with her razor-sharp observational skills and intuitive understanding of human tells, realized Kyouya Onodera suffered from anosmia – the partial or complete inability to smell. A critical weakness, hidden in plain sight.

This discovery, Arthur knew, would have immediately sparked a deadly, opportunistic idea in Nana’s cold, calculating mind. Kyouya’s older, somewhat neglected house, unlike the more modern dormitories, still utilized bottled gas for its heating and cooking appliances. Anosmia meant he wouldn’t detect a gas leak until it was far too late. It was a perfect, almost untraceable method of elimination for an otherwise unkillable target.

A day or two after Nana’s seemingly innocuous visit, a powerful, ground-shaking explosion ripped through the northern, more secluded part of the island, sending a roiling plume of black smoke billowing into the clear afternoon sky. Panic, a now familiar companion to the students, flared anew. Teachers, their faces pale with alarm, rushed towards the site of the blast. Arthur’s heart sank with a sickening thud; he knew immediately where it had occurred, what it signified. He could almost picture Nana, arriving at the scene with a carefully orchestrated display of shock and concern, perhaps even feigning an attempt to "rescue" Kyouya, all the while expecting to find his scattered, incinerated remains among the smouldering wreckage.

Instead, she would have witnessed the utterly impossible: Kyouya Onodera, emerging like a phantom from the smoking, demolished ruin of his home, his clothes scorched, his skin blackened, yet already regenerating before her very eyes. Cuts would have been sealing, burns fading to new pink skin, his white hair dishevelled but his body remaking itself with an unnerving, silent speed.

Later, Kyouya, with his characteristic, infuriating stoicism, would have calmly confirmed to a stunned, undoubtedly seething Nana that yes, he was, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Her meticulously planned assassination, exploiting a cleverly deduced hidden weakness, had failed spectacularly against a Talent that trumped even her lethal precision. For Nana, it must have been a deeply frustrating, almost insulting setback, another name she couldn’t cross off her list. For Arthur, hearing the fragmented, awed accounts of the explosion and Kyouya’s miraculous survival, it was another grim confirmation of the established script, a small island of terrible predictability in the chaotic, churning sea of his new reality. Kyouya Onodera was a problem Nana couldn’t easily solve.

While Nana was grappling with the Kyouya problem and the aftershocks of Arthur’s classroom stunt, another, quieter tragedy was inexorably unfolding, one that Arthur felt with a particular, poignant helplessness: the fading life of Touichirou Hoshino. Arthur remembered Hoshino vividly from the anime – a frail, gentle-faced boy with a shy smile and a Talent for cryokinesis, who was, by his own quiet admission to a few trusted classmates, slowly, inexorably dying of an aggressive, untreatable form of cancer. His time was short, regardless of Nana Hiiragi’s murderous intervention.

Arthur felt a particular, unexpected pang of sympathy for Hoshino. He knew the boy didn’t have long, and the thought of Nana callously cutting that already tragically short life even shorter, purely to meet some unseen, monstrous quota, filled him with a quiet, impotent rage. It struck too close to home, perhaps – the specter of mortality, the unfairness of a life curtailed. He’d tried, in his awkward, phone-assisted way, to find Hoshino during breaks in the days following the Yūka incident, hoping to offer some small, stilted comfort, perhaps even a vague, reassuring “prediction” of a peaceful passing to ease the boy’s final days. But Hoshino, increasingly weak, was often secluded in his room, resting, or had simply wandered off to find a quiet spot to be alone with his thoughts and his pain. He was proving difficult to find.

And then, Arthur was too late.

News, carefully managed and somberly delivered, filtered through the school via a visibly grieving Mr. Saito: Hoshino Touichirou had been found dead. The official story, corroborated by a “traumatized” but “brave” Nana Hiiragi, was that Hoshino, in a bout of melancholic restlessness, had wandered off from the main school grounds, seeking solitude in one of the island’s many natural caves. Nana, ever the caring class representative, had noticed his absence and, filled with concern, had gone looking for him. She’d found him deep within a dark, damp cave, just as they were suddenly, inexplicably attacked by shadowy, indistinct figures – the ubiquitous “Enemies of Humanity.” Hoshino, in a final, heroic act of self-sacrifice, had apparently tried to protect Nana with his ice Talent, but had been fatally stabbed in the struggle. Nana herself, she tearfully recounted, had sustained a “defensive wound” to her forearm – a shallow, suspiciously neat cut – while “bravely” fighting off the attackers before fleeing to report the terrible tragedy.

It was a neat, almost plausible story, playing perfectly into the prevailing atmosphere of fear and paranoia that the school authorities seemed keen to cultivate. But Arthur knew the sickening truth. Nana had found Hoshino alone in that cave, likely in his final, pain-wracked hours, and had murdered him with her poisoned pen-knife, a quick, “merciful” elimination to tick another name off Tsuruoka’s list. The self-inflicted wound was merely a theatrical prop, a cynical flourish to solidify her alibi and paint herself as both a heroine and a fellow victim.

Kyouya Onodera, who had also been present among the group of students and teachers to whom Nana recounted her harrowing tale, had listened with his usual unnerving, impassive expression. But Arthur, watching from the periphery of the shocked gathering, saw the almost imperceptible narrowing of Kyouya’s eyes, the way his gaze lingered for a fraction too long on Nana’s artfully bandaged “wound.” Kyouya was suspicious. He didn’t buy Nana’s overly dramatic, conveniently vague story, not entirely. The pieces weren’t fitting together neatly enough for his sharply analytical mind.

For Arthur, Hoshino’s death, and the fabricated narrative surrounding it, was another heavy, suffocating blow. He hadn’t even been able to offer a single kind word, a moment of shared humanity. He was a man who supposedly held disruptive glimpses of the future, yet he was constantly, frustratingly outmanoeuvred by the brutal, unfolding present. He retreated to the relative anonymity of his dorm room that evening, the phone idle in his hand, the English words of frustration, grief, and self-recrimination dammed up inside him, untranslatable by any app, comprehensible only to the silent, judgmental ghosts of his own conscience. He was an unwilling passenger on a ship of fools, sailing straight into a maelstrom, able to see the waves crashing ahead but with his hands bound, unable to steer clear of the jagged, waiting rocks. The weight of his terrible knowledge, and his profound, repeated inability to act effectively on all fronts, was becoming a leaden cloak, threatening to drag him down into the depths of despair.

Would serve her right

Chapter 7: The Necromancer's Secret and a Ghastly Plan

The swift, brutal efficiency of Ryouta Habu’s demise, following so closely on the heels of Arthur’s successful, if temporary, safeguarding of Nanao Nakajima, sent a chillingly clear message: Nana Hiiragi would not be easily deterred or gracefully outmanoeuvred. If one target became too difficult or inconvenient, she would simply pivot to another, or ruthlessly eliminate any immediate threats to her mission or her cover. Arthur knew, with a sickening certainty, that simply playing defence, reacting to her moves, was a losing strategy. He had to find a way to be proactive, to disrupt Nana’s rhythm, to sow confusion, perhaps even to expose one of the other potent Talents on the island before Nana could get to them. If he could muddy the waters, create other suspects, other focal points of fear and suspicion, it might just buy him, and others, more time.

His attention, with a grim sense of reluctant necessity, turned to Yūka Somezaki.

Arthur remembered her vividly from the anime – a quiet, almost morose girl with wide, haunted eyes and an unhealthy, possessive fixation on her supposedly deceased boyfriend, Shinji. Her Talent, necromancy, was one of the island’s more disturbing secrets. She was, he knew, reanimating Shinji’s corpse nightly, engaging in a macabre, delusional charade of continued romance. The circumstances of Shinji’s actual death – a house fire that had occurred shortly before this cohort of students arrived on the island – were deeply suspicious, almost certainly a case of arson committed by a jealous, enraged Yūka herself, though she had likely long since convinced herself, and perhaps others, that it was a tragic accident.

He began to observe Yūka more closely, his scrutiny carefully veiled. Her tendency to isolate herself from the other students, the way her gaze would occasionally, furtively, drift towards the northern, less frequented and more overgrown part of the island. The almost feverish, defensive intensity with which she spoke of "Shinji" if his name ever, however rarely, came up in conversation, as if he were still alive, merely temporarily absent. It all fit the disturbing profile he remembered.

His plan was audacious, morally dubious, and frankly, gruesome. It carried a significant risk of exposure for himself, and of further traumatizing an already unstable individual. But if it worked, it might unsettle Yūka profoundly, perhaps enough to make her stop her nightly rituals, or at the very least, expose her dangerous Talent in a way that didn’t directly involve Nana identifying and eliminating her. It was a desperate gamble, an attempt to preempt Nana by creating a different kind of chaos.

One quiet afternoon, during a sparsely attended optional study period in the school library, Arthur approached Yūka Somezaki’s secluded table. She was hunched over a thick textbook, though he noted her eyes weren’t actually moving across the page. She looked up as he approached, her eyes widening with a startled, almost hunted expression.

He placed his phone on the worn wooden table between them, the now-familiar ritual initiating his stilted communication. “Somezaki-san,” his translated voice said, pitched low and serious, designed to command attention. He paused, affecting the distant, unfocused look he used when invoking his “Chrono-Empathic Glimpse.” “My visions… they have been particularly troubled these past few days. I sense… a significant unrest. A dark activity, concentrated on the north side of the island.”

Yūka’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, her knuckles whitening as she gripped her textbook. The north side. That was where the burnt-out, abandoned shell of Shinji’s former dwelling stood, a place she likely considered her private, desecrated shrine.

“I believe,” Arthur continued, his translated voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that nonetheless seemed to echo in the quiet library alcove, “that the so-called ‘Enemies of Humanity’ may be planning something there. Something… unholy. Perhaps even tonight, under the cover of darkness.” He leaned forward slightly. “I intend to investigate. It could be extremely dangerous, of course. Would you… consider assisting me, Somezaki-san? Your unique perspective, your sensitivity, might prove invaluable in uncovering their plot.”

He watched her carefully, observing the subtle play of fear and suspicion across her pale features. He was banking on her profound fear of exposure, her desperate desire to protect her terrible secret, outweighing any faint curiosity or misplaced sense of civic duty. The specific mention of the north side, and the insinuation of unholy activities, was the carefully baited hook.

Yūka paled visibly, a sheen of sweat appearing on her upper lip. Her hands clenched convulsively in her lap. “I… I can’t, Tanaka-kun,” she stammered, her voice barely audible, a thin, reedy whisper that the phone dutifully translated. “I… I haven’t been feeling at all well recently. All this… terrible upset about Habu-kun’s death… I think I just need to rest this evening. Perhaps another time?” She wouldn’t meet his eyes, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere past his shoulder.

“A great pity, Somezaki-san,” Arthur’s phone intoned, his own expression carefully neutral. “But entirely understandable, given the circumstances. Rest well.” He picked up his phone and walked away, leaving her to her rapidly escalating agitation. He’d achieved his first objective: she would be terrified, deeply unnerved by his seemingly specific “hunch,” and almost certainly wouldn’t venture anywhere near the north side of the island that night.

That evening, under the oppressive cloak of a moonless, heavily overcast sky, Arthur slipped out of the hushed dormitory. He had discreetly “borrowed” a sturdy canvas art satchel from a mostly unused supply closet and a heavy-duty utility knife that had, for some inexplicable and fortunate reason, been left amongst a jumble of tools in the common room’s lost-and-found box. The island was eerily quiet, the usual nocturnal chorus of cicadas and the distant, rhythmic sigh of the ocean seeming only to amplify the profound silence and his own thudding heartbeat.

He navigated by the hazy memory of the island map he’d once glimpsed and the faint, almost invisible glow of his phone screen, its brightness turned down to the absolute minimum. The path to the northern, more remote part of the island was poorly maintained, overgrown and treacherous in the pitch darkness. After nearly an hour of stumbling through dense, clinging undergrowth, his shins scraped and his nerves screaming, he finally found it: the charred, skeletal remains of a small, isolated shack, its blackened timbers stark against the dark sky, just as he remembered it from a brief, unsettling panning shot in the anime. The air here was heavy, still thick with the faint, acrid, ghostly smell of old smoke and damp decay.

He found a concealed spot within a dense thicket of bushes, downwind from the ruin, and settled in to wait. His heart pounded a nervous, unsteady rhythm against his ribs. This was, he told himself for the hundredth time, certifiably insane. He, Arthur Ainsworth, a fifty-one-year-old former paper-pusher from Crawley, a man whose greatest prior adventure involved misplacing his spectacles during a rather staid Thomas Cook package holiday to the Costa del Sol, was now lurking in the haunted wilderness of a deadly island, preparing to confront a reanimated corpse. The sheer, terrifying absurdity of it all threatened to overwhelm him.

Hours crawled by with agonizing slowness. The cold night air, damp and clinging, seeped into his bones, making him shiver uncontrollably. Doubt, a insidious, gnawing worm, began to eat at his resolve. What if he was wrong? What if Yūka, spooked by his earlier veiled threats, didn’t summon Shinji tonight? What if some other creature, one of the real Enemies of Humanity, if such things truly existed beyond the manipulative government propaganda and Tsuruoka’s monstrous fabrications, found him first? He clutched the utility knife, its cold, unforgiving metal a poor and insufficient comfort against the rising tide of his fear.

Just as the first, almost imperceptible hint of bruised grey began to lighten the eastern sky, dimming the stars, he heard it – a distinct, unnatural shuffling sound, the sharp snap of a dry twig under a clumsy footfall. He peered cautiously through the dense leaves, his breath catching in his throat. A figure was lurching out of the pre-dawn darkness, moving with an unsettling, jerky, puppet-like gait. It was vaguely human-shaped, its clothes tattered and mud-stained, its skin a mottled, unhealthy, almost phosphorescent hue in the gloom. Shinji. Or rather, what Yūka Somezaki’s dark Talent had made of him.

Arthur’s breath hitched. This was it. No turning back. He gripped the utility knife, its handle slick in his sweaty palm. He’d never considered himself a brave man, not by any stretch of the imagination. He wasn’t entirely sure he was one now. But a desperate, cold, almost inhuman resolve had settled over him, born of fear and a grim, overriding necessity.

He waited, every muscle tensed, until the shambling, reanimated corpse lurched past his hiding place, then he lunged.

The struggle was a nightmarish, clumsy, terrifying wrestle in the damp earth and decaying leaves. The creature, despite its decayed state, was surprisingly strong, its dead limbs animated by an unnatural, jerky power. It clawed at him with surprising force, its decaying flesh exuding a fetid, sweetish odour of grave dirt and rot that made Arthur gag and his stomach heave. It moaned, a low, guttural, inhuman sound that seemed to vibrate in his very bones. He dropped the utility knife in the initial, frantic scuffle but managed to bring the heavy canvas bag down hard on its head, stunning it for a precious, disorienting moment. Scrambling desperately in the dirt, his fingers closed around a hefty, sharp-edged rock.

He didn’t allow himself to think, to hesitate. He just acted, driven by a primal survival instinct and the grim, horrifying necessity of his insane plan. It was a brutal, sickening, desperate business. When it was finally, blessedly over, he was shaking uncontrollably, his clothes torn, his body covered in dirt and something he desperately hoped wasn’t zombie effluvia. Shinji’s reanimated form lay still, a grotesque parody of life extinguished.

With trembling, bloodied hands, he retrieved the utility knife. The next part, he knew, would be even worse. He had to force himself, fighting back waves of nausea and a rising tide of self-loathing, to complete the terrible task he had set himself. Finally, his heart pounding a mad tattoo against his ribs, his stomach churning with revulsion, he managed to secure the zombie’s severed head in the canvas satchel. The weight of it was obscene.

As the sun began its slow, indifferent ascent, casting a sickly yellow light over the gruesome, desecrated scene, Arthur Ainsworth, or rather, the boy known as Kenji Tanaka, stumbled back towards the distant, still-sleeping school. He was physically and emotionally wrecked, a hollow shell of a man. The thought of what he had to do next, of presenting this horrifying, violating trophy to a classroom of unsuspecting teenagers, filled him with a fresh, overwhelming wave of revulsion and despair. But it was necessary. He had to try and break Yūka Somezaki’s cycle of delusion and necromancy, and perhaps, just perhaps, save her from Nana Hiiragi in the process – even if it meant becoming a figure of profound terror and moral ambiguity himself. He was walking a very dark path, and he wasn't sure he'd ever find his way back.

Thank you @sku-te and everyone who got me to 5 reblogs!

Hej

Chapter 23: Hunted and Haunted

The months that followed the chaotic "evacuation" at the end of the Second School Year had transformed the island into a place of profound, echoing silence for Michiru Inukai. After slipping away from the frenzied embarkation, she had retreated into the island's deep, overgrown interior, finding a precarious solitude in hidden coves and forgotten, crumbling outbuildings of the sprawling academy. She had survived, barely, on her knowledge of the few edible plants Kyouya had taught them to identify, on rainwater collected in broad leaves, and on a fierce, quiet resilience she hadn’t known she possessed. The island, stripped of its teeming, terrified student population and its menacing faculty, had become a different entity – still haunted by memories, but also imbued with a wild, untamed, almost melancholic beauty. She missed Arthur’s quiet, if awkward, companionship, Nana’s newfound, fierce protectiveness, and even Kyouya’s stoic, reassuring presence more than she could say. She often wondered where they had been taken, if they were safe.

Then, one cool, late summer morning, the unnatural silence that had become her constant companion was shattered. Faint at first, then growing steadily louder, came the unmistakable, deeply unsettling thrum of powerful marine engines, followed by the distant, mournful blare of a ship’s horn. Ferries. More than one. Michiru’s heart, which had settled into a rhythm dictated by the tides and the rustling leaves, now hammered against her ribs with a mixture of terror and a wild, desperate hope. New arrivals. The Committee was repopulating its monstrous school.

Clutching the sharpened stick that had become her primary tool and occasional weapon, Michiru Inukai, on hearing the undeniable sounds of pupils arriving once more, decided to forgo her hard-won isolation. Her loneliness, a constant ache, warred with her ingrained caution. She had to know. Were they among the returnees? Or was this a fresh batch of unsuspecting victims, doomed to endure the island’s horrors anew? With a surge of trepidation, she began to make her way, slowly and stealthily, through the dense undergrowth towards the distant, now reactivated docks, her senses on high alert.

For Arthur Ainsworth, the return to the island was a descent into a familiar, deeply dreaded circle of hell. Strapped into a hard plastic seat on the transport vessel, surrounded by silent, grim-faced Committee agents and a new cohort of bewildered, frightened teenage Talents, he felt a suffocating sense of despair. His brief, brutal interlude on the mainland – the back-breaking labor, the constant fear, his abduction, and the chilling pronouncements of Tsuruoka’s subordinate – had stripped him of any lingering illusions. He was a prisoner, a marked man, returned to this cursed place with a death sentence hanging over his head. Nana Hiiragi, he knew with a chilling certainty, would also be here, Tsuruoka’s orders to eliminate him no doubt ringing in her ears. This strange, unending, almost timeless progression of his life, from one bleak May in Crawley to this even bleaker, surreal late summer, felt like a cruel, cosmic joke.

As the ferry docked with a familiar, jarring thud against the weathered pier, Arthur was herded off with the other students, his gaze sweeping the familiar, yet now even more menacing, landscape. He saw Kyouya Onodera further down the pier, his expression as impassive and unreadable as ever, though Arthur thought he detected a new, harder glint in his pale eyes. Nana, too, was visible, a flash of incongruous pink hair amidst the drab uniforms, her face pale and drawn, her usual ebullience entirely absent. She avoided his gaze.

The new students, wide-eyed and apprehensive, were being marshalled by a fresh contingent of stern-faced teachers Arthur didn’t recognize. He felt a familiar wave of helpless anger towards these oblivious newcomers, lambs to the slaughter. His priority, he knew with a grim clarity, was survival. He had to evade Nana, to anticipate her moves, to find a way to neutralize her as a threat without becoming a killer himself. The thought was almost laughable in its impossibility.

Then, a small movement at the edge of the bustling, chaotic pier caught his eye. A figure, small and hesitant, emerged from the shadows of a stack of weathered cargo crates. Her white, fluffy hair, though matted and unkempt, was unmistakable.

Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. His heart seemed to stop. It couldn’t be.

“Michiru?” he whispered, the name a fragile, disbelieving prayer, his Japanese clumsy but heartfelt.

The figure turned, her wide, gentle eyes finding his. A slow, hesitant, almost incandescent smile spread across her dirt-smudged, gaunt face. “Tanaka-kun?” she breathed, her voice weak but clear.

Forgetting the guards, forgetting Nana, forgetting the new students, forgetting everything but the impossible, miraculous sight before him, Arthur stumbled forward. Nana, too, had seen her, her own face a mask of utter, stunned disbelief, her hand flying to her mouth. Kyouya Onodera, his usual stoicism momentarily fractured, actually stopped in his tracks, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly.

Michiru Inukai, who had chosen solitude over evacuation, who had somehow survived alone on this cursed island for months, had come to see who had returned. And in doing so, she had just irrevocably altered the deadly game that was about to begin anew.

The fragile, almost forgotten sense of hope Arthur had so carefully, so secretly, nurtured during his vigil over her seemingly lifeless, yet persistently warm, body now surged through him, potent and overwhelming. She was alive. Truly alive. And she was here.

The reunion was brief, cut short by the harsh commands of the guards ordering the students to move towards the school buildings. But as they were forced to separate, Michiru flashing him a quick, reassuring, if still weak, smile, Arthur felt a subtle shift within himself. He was still a target, still hunted. But he was no longer entirely alone in his knowledge, or in his desperate hope. Michiru’s presence, her impossible survival, was a testament to something beyond the Committee’s cruel calculations, beyond Tsuruoka’s monstrous designs. It was a spark. And perhaps, just perhaps, that spark could ignite something more.

Later that day, as the grim routine of the Third School Year began to settle over them, Arthur knew his primary task remained unchanged: survive Nana Hiiragi. He saw her watching him during the opening assembly, her expression unreadable, the conflict within her a palpable, dangerous force. He would use his knowledge of the island, his understanding of Nana’s methods, his sheer, stubborn will to live, to evade her. He would be a ghost, a shadow, always one step ahead. The cat-and-mouse game had resumed, but now, there was a new, unexpected piece on the board, a fluffy-haired girl whose very existence defied death itself, and whose presence might just change everything. The new students, chattering nervously amongst themselves, remained entirely oblivious to the complex, deadly currents swirling around their upperclassmen, unaware that their island academy was, once again, a hunting ground.

Would be even better if Nana is killed by someone she trusted. Would be nicely ironic

Chapter 11: The Time Traveler's End

The brutal, efficient murders of the two bullies, Etsuko and Marika, served as a chilling punctuation mark in the ongoing, silent reign of terror orchestrated by Nana Hiiragi. While those killings might have been, in part, opportunistic or driven by a cold, strategic desire to protect her new “project,” Michiru Inukai, Arthur knew that Nana was also methodically working her way through the list of Talents provided by her shadowy handler, Tsuruoka. She was identifying and neutralizing those individuals whose abilities were deemed a significant future threat to the Committee’s unseen agenda.

One such individual, whose very existence posed a direct and intolerable risk to Nana’s operational secrecy, was Yuusuke Tachibana. Tachibana was a boisterous, somewhat arrogant, and often loudmouthed boy whose Talent was one of the most potentially disruptive on the island: he could, with a visible shimmer and a slight dizzying effect on nearby observers, travel through time. His ability wasn’t precise or grand; he couldn’t leap years into the past or future. Rather, he experienced short, often uncontrolled, and disorienting bursts into the very near past, usually just a few seconds or, at most, a couple of minutes. He’d often use it in a showy, almost juvenile way – replaying a dropped catch in a ball game to make a spectacular save, or “predicting” the next card to be turned over in a casual game by having already seen it a moment before. But Nana, with her assassin’s mindset, would undoubtedly see the immense danger in such an ability. Someone who could potentially witness her committing a murder, or preparing a trap, and then rewind time, however briefly, to expose her or warn her victim, was an unacceptable variable.

Arthur watched with a growing sense of dread as Nana subtly began to engage Tachibana in conversation over several days. Her questions were always light, posed with an air of innocent, almost girlish curiosity, expertly probing the nature, range, and limitations of his unique Talent. Tachibana, clearly flattered by the attention from the pretty and popular class representative, boasted openly and carelessly about his abilities, demonstrating them with small, unnecessary temporal skips, entirely oblivious to the predatory intelligence gathering happening behind Nana’s bright, encouraging smile and wide violet eyes.

Knowing Tachibana’s grim fate from the anime – a lonely, silent death by drowning in the island’s picturesque, deceptively tranquil lake – Arthur felt a particular, gnawing urgency. Tachibana, for all his casual arrogance and showboating, wasn’t malicious. His Talent, while potentially problematic for a clandestine operative like Nana, hadn’t been used to harm anyone. He was simply a boy with an extraordinary, poorly understood gift, who was about to pay the ultimate price for it.

Arthur sought out Tachibana during a relatively quiet free period, finding him by the lake’s edge, cheerfully and rather inexpertly skipping flat stones across its placid, sun-dappled surface. The water was a deep, inviting blue, its stillness belying the cold darkness that lay beneath.

“Tachibana-san,” Arthur began, his phone held ready, the synthesized Japanese voice emerging into the peaceful lakeside air. He gestured vaguely towards the shimmering water. “A word of caution, if I may. From one wielder of a… perception-altering Talent to another.” He paused, trying to imbue his next words with a suitable gravity. “My own Talent… it sometimes shows me ripples, disturbances in the flow of things, especially around those with powerful or unusual abilities. Your ability, Tachibana-san… it creates such significant ripples. Be wary of still waters today. Very wary indeed. Still waters can be… deceptive.” He tried to inject a note of ominous foreboding into the translated warning, hoping to pierce through Tachibana’s characteristic self-assurance.

Tachibana laughed, a loud, confident, dismissive sound that sent a flock of small birds scattering from the nearby trees. “Ripples? Disturbances? Still waters? Don’t you worry your strange little head about me, Tanaka-kun,” he said, with an arrogant grin, not even bothering to look away from his stone-skipping. “If I see any hint of trouble, I’ll just pop back a few minutes and avoid it altogether! That’s the great thing about my Talent, isn’t it? I’m practically untouchable.” He selected another flat stone and, with a flick of his wrist, sent it skittering across the lake’s surface, supremely self-assured and clearly unconcerned by Arthur’s cryptic, unsolicited pronouncement.

Arthur sighed internally, a wave of helpless frustration washing over him. He’d tried. He’d delivered the warning as clearly and as ominously as he could without revealing his true knowledge. But Tachibana’s overconfidence in his own ability was an impenetrable shield against any form of caution.

A day later, Yuusuke Tachibana was officially reported missing by a “concerned” Mr. Saito after he failed to appear for morning classes.

Nana Hiiragi, naturally, was at the forefront of the students feigning distress and organizing impromptu search parties that, Arthur noted with a grim certainty, conspicuously and deliberately avoided any thorough search of the lake area or its immediate surroundings. He knew, with a chilling clarity, what had happened. Nana would have lured Tachibana to the lake, perhaps under the pretext of wanting to see his fascinating Talent in action in a “safe, open space where no one would be accidentally affected by his temporal shifts.” Then, at a moment when he was vulnerable, perhaps mid-skip, disoriented, or simply distracted by her deceptive charm, she would have incapacitated him – a swift blow to the head, perhaps, or a poisoned needle if she wanted to be certain – and then, with cold, brutal efficiency, drowned him in the cold, unforgiving waters of the lake. A silent, lonely end, leaving no immediate trace, no struggling victim to rewind time and raise an alarm.

The true, macabre horror of her plan, however, came a little later that same day. Arthur observed Nana in a quiet, intense conversation with Sorano Aijima, a timid, easily intimidated girl whose Talent was cryokinesis – the ability to freeze water and lower temperatures significantly in her immediate vicinity. He didn’t need to hear their hushed words, or see the fear in Sorano’s eyes as Nana spoke with that terrifyingly sweet smile, to understand the purpose of their interaction. Nana was coercing her, using a mixture of charm, subtle threats, and the authority of her position as class representative.

That evening, a sudden, unseasonable, and highly localized cold snap seemed to settle over the lake. By the next morning, a significant portion of its surface was frozen solid, a glittering, unnaturally smooth sheet of ice under the pale, indifferent winter sun.

Some of the more adventurous and less thoughtful students, thrilled by the unexpected novelty, somehow managed to procure a motley collection of old ice skates – where from, on this isolated island, Arthur couldn’t begin to imagine. Soon, they were gliding, laughing, and performing clumsy pirouettes across the frozen expanse, their cheerful shouts echoing across the water, entirely oblivious to the horrifying fact that they were dancing on Yuusuke Tachibana’s watery, icy grave. Nana Hiiragi watched them from the lake’s edge, a small, almost imperceptible, chillingly satisfied smile playing on her lips. The evidence of her crime was now sealed away, perfectly preserved, at least until the spring thaw, by which time she would likely be long gone, or other events would have overtaken this one.

Arthur felt a particular, visceral coldness towards this murder. Hoshino, at least, had been dying anyway, his life already tragically curtailed. The bullies had been actively cruel, inviting retribution in their own small way. Habu had been a blackmailer, practically signing his own death warrant with his foolish arrogance. But Tachibana… Tachibana had been guilty of nothing more than possessing a powerful, potentially disruptive Talent and a naive, boyish trust in a pretty, pink-haired girl. Nana hadn’t even allowed him the dignity of a swift, forgotten end, instead encasing him in an icy tomb, his final resting place a spectacle for the unknowing, a grotesque parody of winter fun.

He stood by the edge of the frozen lake, the cheerful, carefree shouts of the skaters grating on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. His phone felt heavy and useless in his pocket. What good were his warnings, his fragmented knowledge, if they were so easily dismissed, so effortlessly circumvented by arrogance or naivety? He was failing, again and again, in his self-appointed, impossible mission. Each death was another heavy stone added to the crushing weight on his conscience, another name on a list he was powerless to shorten. The vibrant, living world of the island, with its sunlit paths and whispering bamboo groves, felt increasingly like a meticulously crafted, beautiful stage for Nana Hiiragi’s deadly, unending performances, and he, one of the few who knew the horrifying script, could only watch in mute, impotent despair as the body count continued to rise.

Chapter 22: Mainland Purgatory

The mainland was a brutal, disorienting awakening into a new kind of hell. Stripped of the insular, albeit perilous, structure of the island academy, and now, crucially, without his phone translator which had been casually confiscated by a bored Committee agent during the chaotic disembarkation, Arthur found himself utterly adrift in a sea of indifferent, uncomprehending faces and a language that was now an almost impenetrable barrier. The yen he’d had in “Kenji Tanaka’s” school uniform pockets had been minimal and was quickly exhausted on a few meagre portions of rice balls. He was just another nameless, homeless youth, lost and invisible in the sprawling, pitiless concrete jungle of a large Japanese port city. His limited, halting Japanese, learned through painful necessity on the island, was woefully inadequate for navigating this complex new world.

Days blurred into a miserable, exhausting cycle of gnawing hunger, damp cold, and the constant, weary, often fruitless search for some form of shelter from the elements or a discarded, half-eaten meal in a fast-food restaurant’s overflowing bin. He slept in darkened alleyways that stank of stale urine and rotting garbage, under the echoing concrete arches of bridges, the ever-present fear of discovery by police patrols or less savory, predatory elements of the city’s underbelly a constant, unwelcome companion. He missed Michiru with an ache that was a physical pain in his chest; her quiet presence, her unwavering kindness, their shared, fragile peace during the last island break, had been a small, precious light in his otherwise oppressive darkness. Now, that light was extinguished, and he was stumbling blindly.

A few desperate, soul-crushing weeks into this miserable existence, as he was huddled in a damp shop doorway, trying to escape a biting, persistent late summer rain, a sleek, anonymous black car with tinted windows purred to a silent halt beside him. A man in a sharp, impeccably tailored dark suit emerged, holding a large black umbrella with practiced ease, shielding himself as he approached. He addressed Arthur by his island name, his Japanese precise and formal.

“Tanaka Kenji-kun?” the man inquired, his voice polite but utterly devoid of warmth or inflection, his eyes cold and appraising as they took in Arthur’s ragged, rain-soaked appearance. “My employer has taken an active interest in your current welfare. He understands, through various channels, that you may be… experiencing some temporary difficulties adjusting to mainland life.” He paused, allowing Arthur to absorb the implications of being so easily found. “He is, therefore, prepared to offer you refuge, assistance, a chance to rebuild your life under more… favorable circumstances.”

Arthur stared at the man, then at the opulent, waiting car, a stark symbol of power and influence in this grimy, indifferent street. He didn’t need his phone to translate the chilling intent behind the polite words. This was the Committee. This was Tsuruoka, reaching out with a silken, poisoned glove. “Who… who is your employer?” Arthur managed, his own voice raspy and weak from disuse, the Japanese words clumsy and heavily accented.

“A concerned benefactor,” the man replied smoothly, his expression unchanging. “He believes that Talented individuals like yourself, particularly those who have endured the… unique rigors of the island program, deserve ongoing support and guidance, not abandonment.”

Arthur almost choked on a bitter, hysterical laugh. Support. Guidance. From the very people who ran a death camp for unsuspecting, Talented teenagers. “Tell your ‘concerned benefactor’,” Arthur said, the English words a sudden, angry torrent from his lips, before he caught himself and forced out a stumbling, defiant Japanese reply, “that I… I appreciate the offer… but I prefer to manage my own affairs. I require no assistance.”

The man’s thin lips curved into the faintest, most chilling of smiles. “A most regrettable decision, Tanaka-kun. My employer is not accustomed to having his… generous offers so readily dismissed. This opportunity may not present itself again.” He produced a plain, unmarked white card from his inner pocket, offering it to Arthur. It held a single, untraceable phone number. “Should you reconsider your position.” Then, with a slight, almost imperceptible bow, he returned to his car, which slid silently away into the rain-swept streets, leaving Arthur alone once more, shivering in the damp doorway, the card quickly turning to sodden pulp in his trembling hand. He knew, with absolute certainty, that he’d made the right, the only, choice, but the brief, chilling contact, the effortless demonstration of their reach, left him profoundly shaken and with a renewed sense of being hunted.

Meanwhile, many miles away, Commander Tsuruoka was indeed displeased. Not only had this Kenji Tanaka anomaly refused his "generous" offer of controlled reintegration, but Nana Hiiragi, his once-star asset, was proving increasingly problematic, her operational effectiveness compromised by sentimentality and doubt. During a particularly harsh, psychologically invasive debriefing session following her return from the island after the truncated second year, Tsuruoka informed Nana that her next assignment would be a return to the island academy, with a new, carefully selected intake of students. He then fed her a meticulously constructed, entirely false narrative: “Kenji Tanaka has become a dangerous rogue element, Hiiragi. His so-called prescient abilities are unstable, making him a unpredictable threat. He has evaded all our attempts at compassionate control and assistance. He is now, regrettably, considered a significant threat to the integrity of the program, potentially even to wider national security interests if his abilities fall into the wrong hands. Your primary, non-negotiable objective for the upcoming term will be his swift and permanent elimination. There will be no failures this time. Is that understood?” Nana, still reeling from her own recent traumas and Tsuruoka’s chilling manipulations regarding Mai, had listened with a pale face, her mind a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and a growing, terrifying dread. Arthur, a threat to national security? The haunted, weary boy who had so tenderly cared for Michiru’s lifeless body? It didn’t track, not at all, yet Tsuruoka’s orders were absolute, backed by the implicit threat of unimaginable consequences should she disobey.

Arthur, entirely oblivious to Nana’s new, horrifying directive concerning him, eventually, through sheer, desperate persistence, found work. It was grueling, back-breaking, spirit-crushing labour on a sprawling construction site on the city’s outskirts, hauling bags of cement, shoveling rubble, mixing concrete under the relentless summer sun. The pay was insultingly minimal, barely enough for a shared, flea-ridden bunk in a crowded, squalid flophouse that reeked of stale sweat and cheap alcohol, and a daily bowl of watery, tasteless noodles. His days became a monotonous, exhausting blur of brutal physical exertion and profound mental despair. He was Kenji Tanaka, anonymous construction grunt, his past life as Arthur Ainsworth, respected (if unfulfilled) accounts clerk, a fading, almost unbelievable dream; his time on the island, with its constant terror but also its strange, intense connections, a recurring, vivid nightmare. He thought often, achingly, of Michiru, wondering where the Committee had taken her, if she was safe, if he would ever see her gentle smile again. The hope of it was a distant, flickering, almost extinguished candle in the vast darkness of his current existence. The irony of his current occupation, he sometimes thought with a bitter twist of his lips, was that this was the kind of life Kyouya Onodera had apparently endured before his own arrival on that cursed island.

His miserable reprieve, such as it was, didn’t last. One sweltering evening, as he trudged wearily back towards the dubious sanctuary of the flophouse, his body aching from head to toe, his spirit numb with exhaustion, a dark, unmarked van screeched to a halt beside him on the deserted, dusty road. Before he could even register the threat, before he could think to run, several grim-faced figures in plain, dark clothes erupted from its sliding door and bundled him inside with brutal, practiced efficiency. He struggled instinctively, a desperate, futile thrashing, but they were strong, their movements coordinated, their grips like iron. A rough cloth, smelling faintly of chemicals, was pressed hard over his face, a sweet, cloying, sickeningly artificial scent filled his nostrils, and the ugly, indifferent world dissolved into a suffocating, unwelcome blackness.

He awoke, gagging and disoriented, in a bare, sterile, windowless room, strapped tightly to a hard metal chair. A single, painfully bright spotlight shone directly into his face, making him squint. Tsuruoka himself wasn’t present – Arthur was clearly not yet deemed worthy of the commander’s personal attention for this particular stage of his “re-education” – but a subordinate, a cold-eyed, stern-faced woman in a severe, dark military-style uniform, stood before him, her arms crossed, her expression devoid of any discernible emotion.

“Tanaka Kenji,” she stated, her voice flat, impersonal, chillingly devoid of inflection. She consulted a thin file in her hand. “Or perhaps, given your rather… unusual background, you currently prefer the designation Arthur Ainsworth?” She didn’t elaborate on how they might know his original name; the casual, confident implication of their far-reaching, invasive intelligence network was, in itself, a potent form of intimidation. “You have proven to be a persistent, and rather tiresome, inconvenience, Mr. Ainsworth. You were given a generous opportunity to cooperate with our organization. You unwisely declined.”

She took a step closer, her shadow falling over him. “Our organization has a significant, long-term investment in the island program, and its successful outcomes. Uncontrolled, unpredictable variables such as yourself cannot, and will not, be tolerated indefinitely. You will be returning to the island academy for the next academic year, with the new intake of students.” Her lips curved into a smile that held no warmth, only a cold, clinical menace. “Consider this your final opportunity to demonstrate your potential utility to the Committee. Or, failing that,” her smile widened fractionally, “to be… neutralized, shall we say, in a more controlled, predictable, and entirely deniable environment. The choice, as they say, is yours. Though, I suspect, largely illusory.”

Arthur said nothing. There was nothing left to say. He was trapped, a terrified, exhausted pawn being forcibly moved back onto the bloodstained, treacherous board.

The journey back to the island was a disorienting, humiliating blur of sedatives, blindfolds, and the gruff, dispassionate presence of his Committee guards. When he finally stumbled off the transport vessel onto the chillingly familiar pier, the sight of the imposing school buildings, nestled amidst the island’s unnervingly lush, verdant landscape, filled him with a profound, soul-deep sense of dread and utter resignation. A new intake of students, fresh, innocent faces full of naive hope or nervous apprehension, were already disembarking from another, larger ferry, their excited chatter a grotesque counterpoint to his own internal despair. The Third School Year was about to begin, and Arthur Ainsworth knew, with a terrifying, inescapable certainty, that he was now not just an unwilling observer or a clumsy, desperate interferer, but a designated, marked target. And this time, he had no phone, no easy means of communication, and very few allies left.